


Age after Age

by cffn



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Humour, M/M, Pining, Sweet, markson, there's sex too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cffn/pseuds/cffn
Summary: Two unrelated stories of how you can meet the love of your life even when you aren't looking, and how your whole world seems brighter and more beautiful when your hearts join together.





	1. Light and Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Two separate soulmate AU's no one asked me to write.
> 
> The second part is a little less serious and told from Mark's pov. The stories are not connected, I just wanted to put them under the same headline or something. Think of them as parallel universes or something like that..
> 
> I hope this is enjoyable.

Today was the day when many things were set in motion. Today was the day when past lives caught up with him. Today was.. Exceptional.

He had been walking down the street on an average day, quite in peace and flipping thru all the songs on his playlist. _No, not that one. No, I don’t feel like that one. Nah, not my thing today. No, no, no.._ Nothing seemed to please him, not one bit. He was restless, he had always been like that, and he couldn’t make up his mind. Like he was suspecting something coming up; it was a creeping sense going up his spine and crawling over his skin, a nagging thought at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t shake off no matter what he tried.

When he had been a teen and the idiotic puberty hit him, the feeling of something being lost had been born. He had been too emotionally distraught to pay much attention to it then, but when he grew older, and his mental capacity seemed to increase, and his emotions took shapes and colors inside him, then he realized he _did_ have a blank space inside his soul. It was a devastating moment, one of those times when you realize the stories aren’t just stories, the nightmares and fairy tales about it were actual reality and not just figment of the babbling fools that live on this accursed Earth.

His heart was incomplete. His whole being shredded to tiny bits because of that one missing piece, that one piece that would make him whole and complete and he didn’t know how many lives he had lived without it already, how long had he been alone and lost in the sea of misery, without his anchor to safe havens. Considering the amount of pain when the realization hit him, it seemed like thousands of lives already; they said the pain increased with each unfulfilled lived life.

There was darkness, like a black hole inside him, consuming him slowly day by day, the pull of the endless abyss calling his name like a siren of doom, the bells of hell beating with the rhythm of his heart. It was lurking there, always on the edge of his awareness, no matter what he did to distract himself from it.

Always there. Always the void, the blank universe of endless darkness, seductive in a wrong way. He didn’t want to give into it, give in to the feeling of utter misery and hopelessness like some people did, those poor lost souls who had lost their minds while searching and failing time after time again.

It scared him that he would always live with that feeling, always would be accompanied with the bullet hole in his heart, bleeding every day more and more, sucking him dry of sensible thoughts and making him edgy and lost. He didn’t want to become of the creatures of misery and hollow hearts.

But today, of all days, when he was irritated more than usual; he had tried to live his normal life as usual by waking up and doing things like eating and going to work, but due to the harmonic chorus of something angelic singing a joyous hymn inside him, instead of the emptiness killing him softly with every hour, he had stopped walking and had stood there, in the midst of people walking past him and had looked around him. There was a reason why he was feeling so light suddenly, wasn't there?

He looked down the streets, not caring that people looked at him oddly, not caring that his clothes were rumpled and his dark brown hair sticking up like he had never seen a brush before. He didn’t care because today everything was different. The nirvana was closing in on him with slow soft steps with each breath he took.

He saw the brown eyes.

He saw the full lips.

He saw the oval shaped face.

The lithe frame.

The delicate hands.

All of it.

And he knew.

But the realization didn’t bring him peace for very long as the person he had seen was gone the moment he blinked once. His heart ached and the darkness squeezed him tightly, almost painfully, like a cloth full of prickly thorns piercing his skin. It was hard to breathe, hard to think and hard to focus on anything and his world was spinning around him like a merry-go-round gone insane.

This was not the first time, he realized, that he had felt this kind of loss. It was a feeling originating far, far back in the years, the beginning hazy and unreadable already. His fears of having lived many lives before this were suddenly confirmed to him and it saddened him more than anything; to know he had experienced this same pain in different lives over and over again already, each time a little worse.

All the hope was not yet gone from this life because he did see the other half of his broken puzzle again, spotting the brown hair like it wasn’t mixing in the middle of the other people but was alight with inexplicable light that was drawing him in like moths fly towards the flame.

The second he saw the person who was sending him towards higher planes of existence he almost ran after him. But he couldn’t. The traffic was horrible around him and he couldn’t jump from his car seat just to leave his car sitting in the middle of the lane and run after the person his whole being screamed of needing to confront. He couldn’t, shouldn’t, play a game of luck with Death when there was a chance of being united, being completed finally. He couldn’t risk it.

It took a year for him to find the man again. And boy, had he been searching. It was like there was not a rock left in the city he hadn’t turned around to see whether the place where the stranger, who wasn’t a stranger at all, was hiding.

But when he found the man with the beautiful almond eyes, he found out that the light in those eyes had vanished, like someone had blown out a candle flame and his own life crushed around him, crumbled down like a house of cards.

A brain tumor, they said. Aggressive and lethal.

This lifetime was a lonely one for him.

He didn’t live long, knowing his loneliness would last until the next life would begin. When your other half dies, you remember all the horrible losses you have had to deal with, you feel it all with full force when the moment of Deaths embrace nears you. You feel that dreadful mourning, that all consuming hatred towards life itself for taking away the one thing you would need to feel whole.

~

A century or two passed, life began anew, and again did the darkness and sad emptiness fill half of his heart. He had no memory of his past lives when he began a new one, there had been so many already, each ending too early and sometimes violently, never to reach the one he needed to evaporate the stinking void from his soul. It was like a black slowly bubbling tar pit, clutching to every fiber of his body and tempting him to let it drown him under its heavy weight.

But he fought it.

Each year, and each life, he pushed through the torment and unsatisfied relationships, bridges burned behind him and regret becoming his second name, the melancholy his constant companion. He fought the shitty reality bringing nothing but pain and misery. But he didn’t lose his hope, not even once.

He had hope, but he didn’t know where to find it. It eluded him; a flash of quicksilver under the surface of water, already gone when you spotted it. That silvery streak across the sky when a shooting star dragged its burning tail behind it while hurling itself through the endless universes and realities.

One day, in the middle of a crowd of people, he stumbled, falling and hurting his knee on the hard pavement. He cursed, the day darkening each passing minute more and more, his spirits dangerously low, the darkness he carried with him suffocating him today worse than usual.

“Are you ok?” A worried voice spoke next to him, the owner of the quiet voice kneeling beside him and a hesitant hand touching his shoulder, unsure if it was alright to touch.

Jackson looked up and met the perfect almond eyes.

It was like fifty lifetimes flashed before his eyes like a film. He saw images; broken, distorted and bloody; A car crash. A hospital. A dark alley and a bloody trail behind the wavering footsteps. A morning light and the last breath of life whispered into the freezing coldness suffocating the body.

Pain. Suffering. Longing. Helplessness. Loneliness.

He looked into the eyes before him, seeing the same violent emotion shaking the stranger and he felt a wave of warmth washing his exhausted soul. He was weak, bare and naked, facing the one thing he had been chasing after lifetimes now, purified of the eternal pain with one acknowledging glance into the brown colour.

“I found you.” It was like a long sigh, relieved beyond anything, tired but grateful. He could have wept right there and then, but he didn’t. “I know you.”

“The missing piece.. My lost evening star.” The stranger whispered from between dry lips, his cheeks dusted with pink and a smile trying to force its way up to the delicate face.

No words were needed, the jigsaw was healing, the heart content now that it had found the other half. They stood up, enveloped by the crowd of people mindlessly passing them by and not minding them at all. Eyes locked together, drinking in the facial features, hands linking together like it was the most natural thing for two strangers to do.

But they were no strangers, not really. When a light was divided in two, it left two broken halves, each inside a person who would feel the loss most horribly, until one day two would become one again.

Their first kiss was the final seal that banished the darkness and drove the clouds away from their minds, locking away forever that horrible all consuming black hole, trying to suck their existence away.

Melting together, in the peace and quiet of the room, bodies hot and needy, voices cracking and hoarse, it was the dream come true for both of them. The whispers of their names, like droplets of morning dew, kissed upon the warm skin, shivering at the touch. Hands, searching and memorizing all the curves and nooks of the other, drawing age old patterns on the skin that trembled in the embrace.

The rapture, the near ascension of souls, all combined into that moment of exploding pleasure, one heart filling the other with such light it nearly burst them open. Nearly painful happiness exhausting them, lips cracked and dry, kissing hotly their pair, whispering sweet words and small promises of sunlit paths and eternal, brightly shining destiny. Promising the forever love, promising the moon and stars. Promising to gather stardust from the sky only to scatter it upon the loved one, to make them sparkle like million diamonds, like morning dew in the first rays of summer sun.

Jackson was content. His heart was beating in unison with Mark’s heart, the sound perfect and harmonious, the melody the most beautiful sound ever created. He lay next to the pale body, limbs tangled and fingers idly moving over that soft surface, drawing slow circles and lines. He inhaled the smell of the room; sex, love and happiness. Sunlight was far gone beyond the horizon, the room dark and dusty, the wind a gentle whisper in the cracks of the building, singing a soft lullaby to them, cradling them like a blanket of feathers.

This was their final life. The worlds would end and they would stop existing. But it didn’t matter; there was completion, finality in their unison and the knowledge of being at the end of universe not one bit frightening.

The joining of their hearts lights was forever and even if existence would soon stop being at all, they would remain as one.

There is always light, even in the darkest of nights, and Mark was the light for Jackson and Jackson the light for Mark.

They spooned together, content and sleepy, worrying about nothing, the life outside the room moving sluggishly towards the end of everything.


	2. Sweet as Nectar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A story from Mark's point of view, not connected to the one before this.

In a world where everything is rotating around finding your true love, the One, your soulmate, your puzzle piece, your significant other, in that world you, who walk alone, are deemed odd and disgraceful.

Some people found their counterpart very young, that was considered the perfect pair, the superior match, like it had been written in some prophesy about love and happiness. Some people took their time and found what they were looking for only when they reached mid-twenties. But that was the moment when it was to happen, if it would.

In such a world, Mark was a loner, an oddball, a freak.

He was nearly 30 and he had never felt any lingering affection towards anyone besides his family members. He loved them dearly, and he knew his parents were worried about him being shunned by society just because his ying to his yang hadn’t cropped up from anywhere yet.

Not that he had been looking for either.

Mark liked his privacy, his solitude, and he sneered at the thought of meeting someone who could turn his world upside down just by existing. It made him laugh to think he might feel a tidal wave of feelings when he finally met this person, and would bask in the warmth of their smile and love.

This was what others had told him it felt like. He just couldn’t imagine himself going gaga over someone, not like that.

Not everything was like in the fairytales about love and affection.

They said the pick would be random, so very random. Somewhere in the middle of human history a mutation in the genes had started to determine couples who would be best suited to be together. It had been confusing and ridiculous time but as decades passed, people learned to accept that your significant other wasn’t gender based, nor did it base anything on looks or race either.

Basically you could end up with the same sex who looked like they had never seen a race track or cared very little about their looks.

They said looks didn’t matter but Mark was sure somewhere under all that crap about being forever happy with your other half, people strived to change the ways of that person and tried to mould them into more fitting image they had in mind.

One thing however the random pick did base on; age. That was the one, and only in Mark’s opinion, factor consoling the nervous youths who feared to be paired with someone much older than them. Biology, or destiny, or whatever you wanted to call it, had at least some sense.

Mark didn’t want to be molded, nor caged, nor did he want to end up with someone who was unpleasant to the eye. Because he would, if he ever would come face to face with such a person, be looking at them the rest of his life and the thought of waking up feeling _happy_ with someone he would otherwise deem unfit for him was quite revolting. It only made Mark escape the real world into cyber worlds instead.

So he shunned the society as much as he could. But he couldn’t stop doing everyday things, like eating.

It was an ordinary day and Mark was examining the oranges critically, contemplating whether or not to buy them because they kind of insulted him by being so ridiculously unattractive. Squishy, out of shape, oozing the sticky juices all over the unbroken ones and Mark wrinkled his nose at them, thoroughly displeased with the whole sight.

“Have the oranges done something bad to you? You look like you are trying to sentence them to a lifetime of imprisonment. Or maybe you are trying to commit mass murder right in front of everyone in broad daylight.” A rough voice chuckled near him and Mark looked up.

He couldn’t help it.

He squeezed the orange he had been examining so hard in his fist it broke and the juice squirted all over his hand.

_Fuck._

That was the only word Mark could think. Nothing else came to his mind and he just stared at the ridiculous smile directed at him, the amusement so vivid and clear in the eyes of the man standing there and silently laughing at him.

“Well, that wasn’t imprisonment. I guess you chose the death sentence after all. One by one you’ll kill the oranges until there is only pulp left?” The words came out of the smiling mouth and Mark couldn’t stop himself from looking at the way the mouth moved, how the words fell from the set of lips that made him think of lollipops and long sweet kisses in the rain and _holy crap stop thinking, right now._

“Funny.” Mark managed to wheeze out. The stranger winked, grinning impishly and pushed one hand through his impossibly glossy brown hair and Mark felt his juice stained hand twitch. Oh no, he just didn’t think about running his own fingers through the locks, reach for the neck and draw the head closer and..

“So they tell me.” The round brown eyes were warm, gleaming with mirth. “Tell me.. Have you ever believed in love at first sight?”

“No.” The word fell from Mark’s mouth fast, almost too fast, and the stranger smiled even wider at him, like he knew something Mark didn’t and Mark hated him for that.

“Good. Me neither.” The laughter fell from the perfect lips like rain falling over your face, the high tone ringing in Mark’s ears. The fact it wasn’t unpleasant was turning all the knots Mark never knew he had possessed. “But here I am wondering if I could possibly get your number, just because I think it was pretty funny you actually murdered that orange when you looked at me.”

Mark had the unpleasant feeling he was looking like a deer in the headlights. And continuously the unpleasant, or that’s what he told himself quite adamantly, romantic, pink coloured phrases and images flooded his mind like he was standing under a Niagara of feelings.

“Yeah. Okay.” Mark found himself saying without thinking. “Wait, what.. No! Fuck, I don’t believe in this crap.” He was confused, frowning and his hand felt yucky, the sweet nectar sticky and gross on his skin now. He wanted to wash his hand, and his mind, and he wished he hadn’t gotten up at all today.

Too late for that.

“Don’t be mean. It can’t hurt to see me without fruit pulp all over your hand.” That pout, it surely was illegal to possess such amount of pleading puppy eyes and trembling, jutting lower lip that made you want to suck it in your mouth and bite down on it, to make it even more plush and pink.

“You are so.. such..” Mark stammered, lost for words, his head swimming with sweet hot images what he could do with such a person as the lame joker near him was. Because he wasn’t exactly ugly or anything and that definitely was _not_ the point here.

“An idiot?”

“Yes!”

“We are on the same page then.” A wide smile and a moment of shuffling. “Here, take my number. Call me gorgeous.”

“You just didn’t call me that.” Mark almost groaned, the fluff inside his heart consuming his rational sense of thinking and beating so fast he was getting weak kneed. He really hated this, like, not at all. Wait, _yes he did!_

“Yup. I did.” A wink and a grin were sent to Mark, and his heart skipped a happy beat, the irritating sound of his own breathing wheezing in his ears.

Mark was left standing there, hoping against hope he hadn’t just met his significant other. No fucking way it had just happened like this. _No way._

But it had.

Did it have to happen like this? Mark stood frozen in the grocery store and people muffled their laughter to their palms when they looked at his stupefied expression and _knew_ that the man who had just walked away had triggered that one thing in Mark everyone got to experience once in their life.

The meeting of his significant other, the soulmate, the lost piece of his heart, his ying to his fucking yang. Mark’s mother was going to flip with joy when she would find out, and then she would crawl through the phone lines like Sadako came through television in the movie Ring when Mark would tell her that he had called the love of his life an idiot and refused to give him his number.

 _“But I want grandchildren from you too!”_ She would say and Mark would argue that guys couldn’t push pumpkins out of them like women could and he would have to adopt, with or without his other half, if he ever would get to the point of wanting kids.

And, to this day he hadn’t wanted a small copy of himself, adopted or half his and half someone else’s. But now, all of a sudden, it was such a _brilliant_ idea to get a child, or two. Or four, or ten, because suddenly it was absolutely impossible to think about life without sharing parenthood with that person who had made such stupid jokes and had almost literally stolen Mark’s heart with that bright smile and with the warmth of his eyes that had caressed over Mark’s face and body and left him tingling and unfocused.

What utter bullshit this was!

Mark rushed home and locked himself in, trying to escape from the real world and deny the pull he had towards the man and the images inside his head that smelled like orange juice. He tried to play, to succumb to the surreal world of imaginary destruction and war, stealth and healing wounds with spells and weird herbs.

But he found himself unable to focus, unable to enjoy any of the thrills the gaming usually gave him; his attention was wandering and his eyes found the piece of paper where a number was scrawled on with messy handwriting that looked adorable and not annoying like it _should_ have.

Mark tore his hair with both hands, he pulled his hands down his face and wished he wasn’t feeling like the easy prey he was; a fool who had fallen the moment his eyes had locked with his destined partner. He was disgruntled and angry; how could have he been made the fool of love when all he had done his life was to sneer at the whole concept! Was this karma kicking him in the ass for making fun of it all? Whatever it was, it was causing Mark some serious problems because he had to take a cold shower more than two times during the days he spent denying his growing need to know more about his orange flavoured stranger. The pure lewdness of the images cropping up from his unconsciousness were enough to cause him such painful hard ons it was nothing but necessary to relieve the aching pain and _need_ for another body, another touch roaming over his skin and burning and scorching him alive.

Mark almost cracked during his denial time.

After kicking a wall or two, banging a pillow with his hands and growling how unjust this all was, Mark was holding the phone to his ear the dialing sound booming in his head.

 _“Jackson.”_ The sound was soothing all the needs and aches Mark had been experiencing ever since he had met with Jackson. It was like cooling water running down his burning body, making the longing a pleasant throb instead of the painful, feverish yearning.

“It’s Mark. If you can forget I killed an orange, I can forget your lame jokes.”

 _“Sure.”_ There was a smile in Jackson’s voice and Mark could hear it and it warmed him more than he wanted to admit, but despite his need to resist he couldn’t help the warmth reaching his heart and making him weaker than he had ever been and yet stronger than he had ever hoped to be.

And that was it. There it all begun, the lifetime of happiness. Well, that was what the rest of the society would claim it to be but Mark knew it would be anything but that. His companion was nothing like he was; Jackson was loud, insecure and bound to do the most idiotic things one could imagine.

Their first steps together were stumbling, hesitant and searching and more than once Mark wanted to sigh and toss away the helplessness he felt when he couldn’t say something to soothe Jackson’s fears or brush away his hurt. It took time, but little by little the fragments of their souls joined together and eventually a simple brush of fingers could save them from miserable thoughts.

The love sneaked in, it wrapped around his heart slowly until one day he couldn’t take it any longer. It was the day Mark willingly kissed the laughing lips without being goaded into doing so. He gave in, forgetting his disagreement with the twists and turns the soulmate system.

His original refusal to believe in destined partners had been tramped down and Mark felt almost rebellious for a time, even when he was with Jackson, like he wanted to fight the system and prove everyone wrong. But he couldn’t resist Jackson. Couldn’t find it in him to resist the way Jackson made it impossible to look anywhere but him sometimes, to search his eyes, to reach absent-mindedly to correct the way his hair was, to caress his neck.

The first time they shed their clothes off in front of each other was like stepping into a pool of warm water, their movements joining in together flawlessly while they learned the tricks and kinks each had, worming their way under the skin and into the heart of the other, making a nest there for themselves for all eternity.

Lips so plush and warm moving against each other, tasting and exploring the depths with infinite curiosity, switching from demanding to pleading with every second heartbeat, finding a rhythm to match each other, the passion rising with each passing second. The time didn’t exist around them, the hushed silence embracing them, the only sounds were the breathy whispers of need and lust, of love and sweet promises, the pleasure sweeping them away.

Hands roaming over the skin, over the limbs, over the hair and eyes, caressing the rows of soft lashes with tender fingertips, trembling lips kissing away the drops of sweat running down from the temple. Hiding away from the world together like this, completing each other and hips joined in a passionate dance that had been danced since the beginning of time.

Mark was being wrapped into love, smothered with it and he didn’t hate it one bit. He was the armor shielding Jackson, Jackson was the shining light keeping the darkness at bay. Together they had the perfect shell against anything.

Joining his body with Jackson was like waves crashing the on the shore, sometimes angry and erratic like a stormy sea, sometimes soft and so beautiful and smooth it made you cry because it was like lying on a beach when the sun rose from behind the horizon and you were filled with overpowering heat and love that consumed you and left you wanting for more. Head spinning and heart racing, breath mingling together the sweet union of their bodies completed their bargain with destiny, and destiny.. that laughing little child with wicked thoughts and plans in mind, sat somewhere and laughed deviously at the shattered denial.

It was so sickeningly perfect, but it made them happy. Sun shone brighter, rain tasted like warm summer, no wind could falter them, cold could not reach them, no sickness beat them and penetrate the happy bubble that sheltered them from any harm. Their budding love was a cocoon of safety and homely feelings, so sickly sweet it was like the nectar that had run down Mark’s fingers. His fingers that Jackson liked to look at and place his own hand against and intertwine their hands, kiss Mark’s knuckles or suck a finger between his lips and turn everything hazy with lust.

Sex was like little stars falling from the sky and Mark hated the way his thoughts ran down the poetic paths so easily. But to him holding Jackson close to his chest, bury his face to the crook of his neck, move in unison and wish the moments could last forever, it was everything to him. Nothing could ever change that. And nothing could ever take that from away from him.

They would live their lives together as one, share their hopes and fears and guide each other through the darkest of times if there were such days to come.

And it was scary and it wasn’t. He was complete even though he never knew he had been incomplete. The thought had never infiltrated Mark’s mind until he saw Jackson on that faithful day when he had killed the orange with a squish of his fingers. Now that he knew he was complete and loved, in more ways that it was possible, it seemed unbelievable he had even lived a happy life before without Jackson.

To him Jackson was the world, the sun, the galaxy and the whole boundless universe. To Mark Jackson was beginning and the end, the cycle completed.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment, kudos.. or come bother me at Twitter. Anything and everything is appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
